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HEAD TRICK
by Brandon Cornett

I'm not sure what the partygoers expected. Maybe that I would waltz in and perform the head trick right off the bat, damn the greetings and usual party protocols. But judging by their dopey smiles and shameless gawking, they hoped for exactly that.

Janine was not amused, though. She did not share their excitement, least of all their desire to see me expand my head into a ballooning spectacle, worthy of Barnum and Bailey. She told me so in the car coming over, in a language both plain and fearsome at the same time. "You will not do the trick," she said, her voice calm and measured. "And if you do the trick, I shall never speak to you again."

I'd never heard her use the word "shall" before, and it made my neck-hairs dance. The message was clear.

But what's a man to do? They beg to see it. They clamor and pine and call me things like "Old Sport" and "Patrick the Party King." I tell them, with my eyes, to persuade the little woman, to get her onboard vis-à-vis my head trick. My freakery, as Janine calls it. Convince the Speaker of the House and the party will vote with her; persuade the General and her legions are yours. Talk to her, I say with my expression, because it is out of my hands.

They must get my drift, because minutes later I'm alone, save for a short, redheaded guy whom nobody seems to know (but we're pretty sure arrived with Vince). So it's this stranger and I, sequestered in a corner beside a towering bookshelf, nursing cocktails while my wife becomes the center of attention. The men sniff her neck and ask if it's a new perfume. The women eye her up and down, approvingly, and swear she has lost weight. I watch their behavior, with my new friend the redheaded nobody, like I am watching a tribal ritual, rarely seen by the eyes of an outsider.

It is through a mixture of flattery and highballs, spread over two hours, that Janine finally caves. And it's barely another hour before I find myself in the familiar position of standing centermost in a wobbly circle of drunks, hearing my name chanted like that of a circus performer. Come one, come all, see Patrick the Magnificent!

But it does something to me, the attention. And try as I might to be humble, I have reached the point where I crave it.

I look to Janine for a signal, a permissive nod or wink that tells to me to do the trick. She's between Bob and Vince now, and I can tell by the way she leans on them in turn that the drinks have relaxed her. Maybe too much. Vince has his hand on her butt, and she either doesn't care or doesn't realize it's there. Suddenly my cheeks burn and my stomach swirls up with this thing inside me, this mixture of wanting to perform and wanting to beat the shit out of Vince.

Janine gives me an off-balance wave with her cocktail. "Go ahead, Patty," she says, referring to the trick. "One time won't hurt anything." Patty is what she calls me when she's exceptionally hammered; I've heard it thrice in six years. Then I watch as Vince, smiling and cheering me like the others, gives Janine's butt a little squeeze. "Come on, Sport-o," he slurs. "I haven't seen ya do it since New Year's."

They are all begging for it now, downright giddy with anticipation. Their smiles are those of children given post-checkup lollipops by the dentist: quick to fade with nothing underneath, no genuine appreciation. It's cheap entertainment they're after, the same kind that dominates our so-called culture. The mindless entertainment of television. The fading of literature and the unnerving rise of trash novels. Give us a sideshow, cry the masses. Give us action-thrillers with simple plots, in surround-sound multiplex splendor. Please, please, furnish us with a fix.

They are begging for it, and I am just the guy to give it to them.

Track lights shine on me from the ceiling, where Bob and Sheila have spun the fixtures to face me. And the voices, the murmurs of enticement that are sweet birdsong to my ears: "Patrick, Patrick, Patrick . . ."

I doff my tortoise-shell glasses and hand them to the dwarfish redhead for safekeeping. I set my scotch on the coffee table, atop a worn copy of Home Beautiful. And then it's all focus.

The first time I did the trick was an accident, a casual yawn that went astray. There was no control in those days, and more often than not, my head shrank back to normal with parts out of place. Case in point, I went the entire month of July unable to eat corn from the cob. So I swore to myself, on the evening of that incident (dinner with Janine's folks) that I would never again use my talent carelessly. Focus would be foremost. Skills would be honed. And for thirty days I spooned creamed corn into my mouth and repeated my mantra of Focus, focus, focus! Control, control, control!

Breath manipulation is Step One, so I inhale deeply four times, as practiced, and concentrate on storing the air in my skull. I know there's truly not any air up there, but it helps me to visualize things. Next, I contract my diaphragm hard and shout, "Hup!" Then come the initial crunching sounds of my skull as the bones slide and pop out of place, like a python stretching its jaws over a pig. My frontal and parietal. My perforated ethmoid and lachrymal. I've learned all their names, my special little parts, and I maneuver each one in turn, focusing all the while.

Somebody in back drops a glass, and I hear the usual Lord's-name-in-vain gasping from the new people; but for the most part it's the simple-minded looks of astonishment, the Fourth-of-July oohs and ahs, the easily-won loyalty of children with lollipops.

I suck in another breath and exhale with a loud "Hup!" Out go my eyes toward the side of my face. Down goes my chin, the jaw stretching and inflating.

"Good Christ!" somebody shouts. I turn sideways to see who it is, but they're already making for the bathroom. Never mind them. Hup!

Then I catch a glimpse of myself in a silver champagne bucket on the coffee table. My head-size has doubled, at least, and the sudden image of it almost weirds me out. I can still see, though, despite having to turn sideways to look at what's in front of me, and I see that Janine and Vince have begun to sway back and forth together as they watch me. His hands are on her hips. And God strike me down if I'm imagining it, but I could swear he is sniffing her hair.

Act out, I tell myself. Walk over there and punch that guy in the schnoz. But the crowd is wired to me now, connected by the thing only I can give them. I cannot stop.

I feel my jaw slide crooked as the little green monster shakes my focus, so I shut my eyes to the scandal of Janine and Vince. Hup! But I can't shut it out, not fully. That image, the two of them fusing in a drunken tangle of lust, burns into my brain. And everything falls apart.

Okay, Honey, I think. All right, Vince. You want to see the trick? I've got a trick for you. You want cheap entertainment? You want to regress and become groundlings instead of climbing to new cultural heights? So be it.

Without another thought, I inhale like a tornado, curl my lips, squeeze my eyes shut, and focus like I've never focused before. "Hup!" I shout, my voice distorted, raspy. "Hup, goddamit, Hup!"

I open my eyes again and see Janine, inches in front of me. It's the back of her head I'm looking at, and it's so close I cannot make out anything else around it. Her shampoo smells of strawberries, summertime in the country. For a moment I think she has moved toward me, but then I roll my eyes around in their yawning craters and see that she hasn't moved at all, that my face has only gotten closer to her, closer to everything. Then I pull back and realize she and Vince are making out, their eyes closed, their lips smacking like wolves on a carcass. They are oblivious to my closeness, my planetary eyes on back of their heads. Then somebody screams, off to my left, and Janine and Vince pry their faces apart to see what the commotion is. She wheels around and we are eye to eye. Her scream startles even me.

I fumble around for the champagne bucket, so I can see what they see, but in the process my left ear catches a vase and sends it to the floor with an expensive crash. My right ear bumps the aquarium on the opposite wall. Warm water and tropical fish flood my ankles.

The champagne bucket tells all. My head is half the size of a Volkswagen now. And it should scare me. I should be thinking, well, this is certainly odd, this is uncharted territory through which I should be careful venturing. But all I can see is the image of Janine and Vince. All I can hear is the voices, over the years, imploring me to do the trick, please, just do the trick. Satisfy our base appetites. And the scent of strawberry shampoo fills my nostrils. Hup, hup, hup!

###

Twenty minutes later I'm alone again, standing on the leg of a broken chair and what looks to be a couch cushion. The cool night air is a godsend, as it passes through the cracks of the building.

It was painless for most. Quick and thorough, so I doubt they saw it coming. As for me, I'm only half-responsible. It reached a point where I could no longer control my head, as it pulsed and swelled through the house. They asked for it, and they got it. Out of my hands. Janine and Vince, they were pressed into one (more than they had wanted) by the expansion, a blitzkrieg of cranial proportions. Walls buckled. Roofing caved. There were no survivors. Except me.

And I ponder, as I exit the remains of the posh duplex, just where to go from here, what to do. A fog has settled in; the streetlights are faint halos. But I see things, visions of large, multi-colored tents and colorful performers. Cotton candy, too. Suddenly I know where to go. People want spectacle. They are begging for it, and I am just the guy to give it to them.